Hosted VoIP Solutions Include New Phones

When we think of cloud services, it’s fairly easy to imagine the server racks down the hall being replaced by a much larger set somewhere out there. Similarly, it’s easy to see that the PBX in the telecom room disappears one day to be replaced by a much larger hosted PBX system in the cloud. But what about all those phone wires that used to plug into the PBX FSX and FSO ports? What do they plug into now?

They need to do what the network connections do. Moving data servers outside is made easier by connecting the LAN to an edge router that has a high capacity WAN line to your cloud service provider. When you outsource the PBX, the same thing needs to happen. In this case, the connection is called a SIP Trunk. Yes, it’s possible to terminate the SIP trunk into a myriad of analog phone ports so you can just plug in the phones you now have and keep going as if nothing has changed. But if you do that, you’ll miss out on one of the big advantages of upgrading to Hosted PBX service. That’s all the special features enterprise VoIP has to offer.

A big cost saver with VoIP, especially for medium and large organizations, is the consolidation of the separate phone and computer networks into one converged voice and data network. The phones are now like computer peripherals. There’s an RJ-45 jack on the back that connects to the network just like a PC. The phone has its own MAC address. You can move it around on the network and still have it ring at the same phone number. Forget rewiring or reprogramming like you have to do with standard phones when you make changes.

Analog phones can be made to work like IP phones by using an adaptor box called an ATA (Analog Telephone Adaptor). This is something of a kludge because the phone still has only the rudimentary features it had before. That’s why the ATA approach is only used for residential, home office and very small business situations. For every other application, the right thing to do is bite the bullet and move up to IP phones, also called SIP phones. These are telephones designed to run on the converged network and make use of productivity features you can get with networked telephony.

If you are designing your own in-house enterprise grade VoIP telephone system, you’ll need to budget for new phones as well as the IP PBX equipment. Count up the number of desks and wall phones, multiply by the cost of each IP Phone at several hundred dollars per, and your eyes may pop out at the total investment required. You can put together a capital investment plan and go face the bankers or take the alternative approach of pay-as-you-go.

Who let’s you pay by the month for your complete telephone service? Hosted PBX providers, that’s who. The pay for usage model is what’s making cloud computing such a hot service these days. There’s no reason telephony can’t be put on the same basis. The one variable is the telephone sets that remain at your business, not in the cloud. You can buy those, of course, or you can have the lease cost included in your per-seat pricing for the system. That way you get brand new sophisticated desk phones that are guaranteed to be compatible with the hosted phone service. You also have one provider to deal with for everything. If you’ve ever had to referee between phone set manufacturers and carriers blaming each other for something not working, you’ll recognize the advantage of having “one neck to wring.”

Would you like to avoid the never-ending capital appropriation and procurement cycle in favor of just paying for what you need as you need it? Hosted VoIP may be the way to go for your business. Get competitive quotes and features for hosted VoIP telephone systems and compare with the what you have now.

Business VoIP Solution Options

You may be considering a move from a traditional analog or PBX business phone system to VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol telephony. Before you jump into a major “forklift upgrade,” you should know that there are a number of good business VoIP solutions to consider. Which one you pick will depend on your particular situation. Pick the right one and you’ll get the most for your telephony dollar.

Why even consider VoIP in the first place? The reason is to save money, add calling features or both. Let’s start with the needs of very small businesses and work our way up to enterprise solutions.

The smaller businesses will have one to four outgoing phone lines and under 10 handsets. This is typical of small sales offices, retail stores and independent professionals. You may well be using individual analog phone lines and perhaps 2 or 4 line phones that you can buy at office supply stores.

A system this small doesn’t justify a PBX phone system or PRI digital trunking. But you do have the option to change to a broadband phone or SIP trunking solution. Broadband phone is typified by the Phone Power VoIP service. You connect a device called an ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor to your broadband service, typically Cable Internet, and plug one or two telephones plus your computer or router into the ATA. You no longer need an analog telephone line because your broadband connection is used for both phone and Internet. A typical small office VoIP service plan costs $14.95 a month, but temporary special offers can make this even cheaper.

A step up from single phone number VoIP is called SIP trunking. This service uses a T1 line or other business grade private line to provide multiple line telephone service plus broadband to a small to medium size business. By using dynamic bandwidth management, phone calls have all the bandwidth they require for maximum call quality. Remaining bandwidth is assigned to Internet access. As calls hang up, the bandwidth they were using is automatically or dynamically reassigned for Internet service. This way the full capacity of the line is always put to good use.

Companies large enough to have an in-house key telephone or PBX system generally have many handsets and at least 6 to 10 outside lines. If your system is getting to the end of its useful life, you have the choice of replacing it with a newer IP PBX system or going with a hosted PBX solution. Hosted PBX means that you don’t have any PBX equipment in-house. Your service provider connects to SIP telephones or analog phones with adaptors on your LAN and performs both the internal and external call switching.

Enterprise VoIP telephony also consists of using SIP telephones in place of regular telephone handsets. These SIP phones allow you to converge your telephone and computer networks into a single LAN for both voice and data. You can choose to host an IP PBX system in-house or elect to go with a hosted PBX solution. The tradeoff is capital equipment cost and online maintenance versus paying a monthly fee to a service provider. Think of hosted PBX as a cloud service for business telephony. Even if you install and operate your own IP PBX system, you still have the option to use SIP trunking to connect with a service provider that will terminate outside calls to the public telephone system. The more traditional solution is to use ISDN PRI telephone trunks for the same purpose.

Which VoIP solution, if any, make the most sense for your organization? There are a lot of variables involved and many suppliers. Why not let an experienced Telarus telecom consultant help you compare costs and features of business VoIP solutions? Then make an informed decision to get the most for your telecom budget.

Toll Free Number Availability Now

You’re thinking about getting a toll free number for your business, but, oh, the grief involved in trying to find one that’s available and then having to send in a bunch of paperwork and waiting a couple of weeks or a couple of months to get service. Is that really worth it?

NO. It certainly is not, and why should you? There are toll free numbers all set up and ready to go right now. All you have to do is pick the one you want from a list of choices and then take about 5 minutes to get your service started. You do all this online at Kall8’s Instant Online Activation site. No need to wait for standard business hours. Get your number tonight, on the weekend, any holiday, or any time at all. The process is totally automated and self-service. As soon as you are set up, you can start using your new toll free number.

So how much does this all cost and what do you get? How’s $2 to get your 866, 877 or 888 toll free number? Not bad, huh? For every month that you want to keep that number, your credit card will get charged another $2. When customers or prospects call you on that number, you’ll pay just 6.9 cents a minute for the length of the call. Rates are a bit higher for Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Saipan. I’ll bet you didn’t even know that you could take toll free calls from those locations, did you?

Sounds cheap enough, but what do you get in the way of service? First of all, you get the ability to change your ring-to number at will. That’s a powerful feature if you aren’t always at the same phone. For instance, many professionals and small business owners on the go will have the toll free number ring to their cell phone when they are not in the office. That way, they will never miss an important call... or that all-important chance to close a sale. If you are going to be in the office all day, change the ring-to number so that all incoming toll free calls will ring your office phone. At night, set it to ring your home phone. You’ll never have to “check in” to see if you got any important calls. They’ll come directly to you wherever you are.

Of course, you get voice mail with your toll free number. After all, there are always some times when you can’t answer the phone. But, this voice mail can be checked online or you can even have voice messages sent to you as email attachments. The same is true with FAX messages. Just have your clients send the FAX to your toll free number. The Kall8 system will turn it into an electronic image and send that to you as an email attachment. Or, you can get your FAX messages online at any time.

There are many other features, such as conference calling, call blocking and forwarding, and Caller ID, and they are all included for the same price: $2 a month plus the cost of calls. You can check those out at your leisure on the Kall8 site. I don’t want to bog you down in details, because you want a toll free number right now. Well, don’t wait a second longer. Select your toll free number and order for instant availability. You can begin accepting calls on your new toll free number in, literally, a matter of minutes.